I’m a Fan of Coincidences

A while back, I noted how on the same night that Barack Obama was in Minnesota clinching the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination, one of the local television stations was airing an episode of Star Trek entitled Plato’s Stepchildren.

This episode is noteworthy for two reasons. First, for the scene where the bad guy forces Captain Kirk to roam around the room acting like a horse while a midget rides on his back.

More significantly, this episode featured the first interracial kiss on American network television. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) kissed Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). At the time, some stations in the South originally refused to air the episode.

Slightly less than forty years later, on Tuesday, June 3, 2008 Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States. Regardless of your politics, its pretty encouraging, and dare I say it, pretty cool.

Last night I had a slightly different reaction as the local Fox station was running the episode of The Simpsons entitled Deep Space Homer.